But among students who had those same lofty academic credentials but didn’t have parents who had attended college themselves, only a third chose to go to a highly selective school. And choosing a less challenging college didn’t make it more likely that those highly qualified students would graduate—it had the opposite effect. Undermatching, the authors found, was almost always a big mistake.
students from disadvantaged background (here, parents did not attend college) went to less competitive schools than their high school achievements entitled them to…and then underperformed and dropped out. "undermatching"
